Extended Christmas Break…

This year I’d planned to bring you all sorts of festive treats. Unfortunately life has gotten in the way, and my health took an unexpected nosedive last week. Everything’s a bit up in the air until it gets sorted out. My inner foodie is sad but will be hoping to be back in the kitchen soon!!

Wishing all my followers and anyone passing by a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and I hope to be back soon!

I will leave you with some foodie pictures taken the past few weeks:

Loaded Salmon & cheese potato skins:

(Aka how to finally use that tin of pink salmon)

Gorgeous ricotta and roasted tomato bruschetta, at Jamie's Italian:

 Sell-your-soul-they-were-so-good Mushroom Fritti, also at Jamie's Italian:

How to scare your friends: Nigella's 40 Cloves of Garlic Roast Chicken:

Mini Blackberry and Coconut sponges

In need of a quick pudding the other night, with not much in the fridge and with no intentions of leaving the house in the snow, I came up with these great mini sponges, using blackberries from the freezer, which I picked a few months back and dessicated coconut, mainly as I had picked up a new bag recently. As I joked to a colleague the next day, it was sort of hedgerow meets Hawaii?! Though it was a very successful meet, and definitely a combination I will use again. To save time I used the Kenwood Chef, though they could easily be made by hand too. Though my life would be incomplete without the mixer and I am thankful every time I bake with it!

I loved the shape of these little sponges, and my guests seemed to like them too! There's just something about foods in miniature which appeals to the senses I think!

Makes 6, easy

Ingredients:

2 eggs
18 blackberries, frozen is fine
120g self raising flour
120g butter/ stork margarine
120g caster sugar (fairtrade, mine was from silverspoon, who were kind enough to send me a box recently)

1 Tsp Baking powder

2 heaped tbsp desiccated coconut
Drop of vanilla extract

I used dariole molds from Tesco Cookshop, no idea if they differ in size? Also a kettle full of boiling water and tray deep enough to hold the molds.

Pre-heat oven to Fan 160o/ 180o

If using a mixer, place the flour, butter, sugar and baking powder in the mixing bowl, beat together, adding the eggs one by one, until creamy and thoroughly mixed, stir in coconut. If by hand, cream the butter and sugar together first, then beat in the flour, eggs, then coconut until mixed together.

Half fill the molds with the mixture, place 3 blackberries in each, cover with the remaining mixture.

Place the molds in baking tray and fill halfway with boiling water, bake for 25-30 minutes or until cooked though, risen and golden brown. If they are browning too much, reduce temperature slightly.

Cool slightly, and remove from the molds using a tea spoon or similar device!

Serve with hot custard or cream

A Perfect Christmas from Sainsburys

On Monday night, I braved the cold weather and the nightmare tube strike and eventually made my way into central London to Sainsburys HQ, alongside other bloggers to sample some delicious new party food products, mainly from the re-jazzed 'Taste The Difference' range. Did you know there are over 1000 items under the Taste The Difference logo? This past year, Sainsburys have been working hard to ensure all the products are at their best and all of the nibbles I tried were delicious!


I must admit that when it comes to entertaining large groups, catering for them can be a bit daunting and I have felt in the past a little bad inside for when resorting to serving up ready made party food, often as the quality has been so hit and miss. However there are only so many hours in the day and whilst I love being busy in the kitchen, am sure my guests would rather see me! (I hope so anyway!) Some of the products I liked in particular from Sainsburys were the mini fish n chips, which came served in these cute little newspaper holders:


(all images courtesy of Sainsburys)

Delicious chocolate truffles:

And believe it or not, mince pie ice-cream! Deliciously creamy ice cream, with chunks of TTD mince pies in! 

Along with the new products, this year Sainsburys are holding an exciting competition for you and your neighbours to win a Perfect Christmas, including A male voice choir, a massive snowfall to create a magical mood, a huge tree all decked out with lights, a dazzling firework display and delicious festive
food and drink! All you need to do is enter here and get your neighbours to enter too! Good Luck!  Incase you have missed the advert, you can watch it here

Salmon with warm Chickpea, Pepper and Spinach Salad

I spotted the other week that BBC Good Food were offering their Healthy Eating app to download for free for a short time only, and having just come into the world of ‘apps’ it was quite a novelty to me! And of course, free is always good!

Shortly after loading it, I spotted this appealing, simple recipe for a Warm Salmon and chickpea salad. Its very easy to make, even at 9pm at night after a busy shift at work and also light enough to eat that time of night!

I daresay this is more a summery dish but on a cold winters day the colours were bright and appealing to both the eyes and tastebuds! It also made for a delicious cold lunchbox filler, much to the envy of my colleagues! I didn’t have any baby spinach as stated, as I was using up some leftover from a veggie curry, however I just de-stalked it and shredded it up slightly, which worked just as well!

Admittedly, I did make a slight mess of the Ipod whilst making dinner; following the instructions but nothing a wet wipe can’t undo! It felt quite strange cooking from the app, rather than a book or sheet of paper but was fun at the same time!

Makes 2 (though I halved for the two occasions I cooked this)
20 minutes, Easy

2 x 140g salmon fillets
1 tbsp Extra virgin Olive oil
Pinch Smoked paprika
100g baby/ young spinach leaves
400g can chickpeas
1 large red pepper
½ lemon, zest and juice

Pre-heat grill to high. Destalk and quarter the pepper, turn over and squish down to flatten, grill for 5 minutes until slightly blackened and transfer immediately to a food bag or similar, allow to cool. Remove the skin and slice thinly

Season with salt and pepper, then grill the salmon for 5 minutes, or depending on thickness of your fillets, meanwhile gently heat the chickpeas in their juices. Whisk together the oil, smoked paprika and lemon juice and zest. Place the spinach on a serving plate, add the red pepper strips to the drained chickpeas, and half the dressing, mix together and spoon over the spinach. Top with the salmon fillet and drizzle over remaining dressing.

Bramley Apple Bundt Cake

This new, and favourite cake recipe came about last week after having 2 bramley apples left to use up from a bag I'd been given, a last minute invite to family to come over for dinner, and being unable to quickly locate a recipe I liked/ had the ingredients for; I adapted a basic sponge recipe into this delicious apple cake, it came out far better than I had anticipated and made for a moist and delicious treat, best served warm with lashings of custard or even cold for breakfast the next morning!

With regards to the cake sticking to the tin, I still haven’t found a failsafe way to line a bundt tin (Lakelands – please make a suitable liner!) so it did stick a little in parts, but with custard poured over it on serving up, it masked a multitude of sins!!
I honestly think this is one of the nicest cakes I have made, it ticked all the boxes for me and I greedily polished the remains off with an alarming speed!
Requires 1 Bundt tin (round with a funnel in the middle)
Ingredients

2 medium sized bramley apples
3 eggs – about 195g
195g self raising flour
195g butter/ stork margarine
1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp baking powder
2 tbsp demerara sugar
195g light brown muscavado sugar
Juice of one small lemon

Pre-heat the oven to 160 fan, 180 standard
Grease and flour your tin, sprinkle over 1 tbsp of the demerara sugar. Core, peel and slice your apples into roughly 2 cm slices, about 1/2 cm thick, and toss in the lemon juice, use a few to make a thin layer over the sugar:



Cream the butter and muscavado sugar together, beat in the flour, cinnamon and baking powder, then the eggs one by one, until all mixed together, spoon over 1/2 the mixture over the base. Make a layer with the remaining apples and remaining demerara sugar:

Place in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until springy to touch and a skewer comes away clean. Allow to cool in the tin for about 15 minutes, carefully turn upside down onto a cooling rack, my tin has a springform clip which helps to loosen. Gently tap it until it releases, a teaspoon will help loosen any stubborn parts! Mine did break a little but as mentionned above, custard does a great cover up!

Here's a picture showing the apple layer inside:

I accept no responsibility if you eat it all in one sitting.

Potato, Parsnip and Smoked Bacon Rosti

I had a battle of wills with this blog post - I have four recipes to bring you and really couldn't decide which to post first!

These Rosti were more fridge surprise, than a planned meal, as I had one lonely baking potato, a bag of parsnips I had bought reduced and some bacon leftover from breakfast, in my head it made sense and I'm glad I made them! The flavours all worked well together and also I got to play with my new coarse grater from Jamie Oliver's range, it did a fantastic job and made light work of the grating, normally a job I try to avoid! I currently have several well used and loved microplane graters, including a coarse one but I prefer the size of the grated item using this, as it made nice big curls and was perfect for Rosti's.

I made four Rosti out of the mixture, though think was a bit over generous with filling the shaping rings, as were very fiddly to turn over! I think the mix would make 8 thinner ones happily and be a bit more crispier.

Ingredients:

3 rashers smoked bacon
1 baking potato, about 200g, coarsely grated
1 large parsnip, coarsely grated
½ white onion, coarsely grated

Few pinches fresh Thyme leaves

Tbsp grana padano, grated

1/4 tsp sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper, about 8 twists/ 1/4 tsp

Firstly, using a large frying pan to cook the bacon rashers until crispy, remove the pan from the heat and drain the bacon on kitchen paper, once cool enough to handle roughly chop and reserve to one side

Next up, grate the potato, unpeeled into a clean tea towel, wring out well and place in a mixing bowl:

Then grate the parsnip and add to the potato mix:

Add the bacon, thyme, grated onion and cheese to the bowl, season and mix well:

Pre-heat the oven to 170 fan/ 190 and line a baking tray

Return the frying pan to the hob and heat to medium temperature, add a drop of olive oil and either using metal cooking rings or by free-form, spoon a couple of tbsp of the rosti mix into rounds, cook for about 4 minutes, gently turn over using a fish-slice or similar tool, and fry for a couple more minutes until golden, transfer to the baking tray and bake for a further 10 minutes or until crispy and golden brown. They will stick a little so do be careful turning! Crispy bits are good though so do not fear!

The pictures are not flattering, the dark nights and kitchen lighting do not make much shine, however they do taste great so thats all that matters surely?!

I served the rosti alongside sausages, though even on their own would be good! Following working two  night shifts, my brain had gone a bit crazy and I did make alongside them a spiced apple compote, unfortunately I couldn't get the flavours quite right so it was abandoned, though will attempt again at some point as thinking it may make a nice sauce for them..